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The Different Pros and Cons of Public WiFi| By |Steven Scheck

Public WiFi is a form of convenience that’s taken for granted these days. Most people expect to get themselves a free WiFi access at several important spots ranging from the airport to that of a restaurant.

But is public WiFi completely safe for use? There’s no doubt that it does come with a fair amount of positives but at the same time, it also exhibits a fair amount of negatives that can actually cause a significant amount of problems to the customers in general.

In this article, I will discuss the different pros and cons of a free public WiFi access in thorough details. Then you can weigh them up accordingly and come to a specific conclusion.

Pros

Free

Most public WiFi networks are available for free. Thus, you will be able to save a whole lot of money on data charges and do all your internet-related tasks on the go on your individual mobile devices at a decent enough speed.

Public WiFi promotes productivity

Anything that supports mobility promotes productivity.

Public WiFI is usually available in important commercial places such as airports, malls, cafes, railways and other similar zones to promote mobility among customers.

From the point of view of businesses, this is of utmost importance because their employees will be able to work on their assignments comfortably on the go, provided they have a device to get themselves connected to the public WiFi network.

So in a sense, public WiFi can positively and directly influence workplace productivity. Now this is definitely an important upside of public WiFi and is certainly praiseworthy indeed.

Can work wonders in case of an emergency

You cannot predict the occurrence of an emergency. It can happen anywhere anytime without prior notice.

Public WiFi acts like a charm in case of emergencies and can bring with it a lot of benefits to bring the situation under control.

For example: Through the aid of public WiFi, people will be able to inform their location and safety status to the authorities in general and their near and dear ones at times of emergencies, thereby quickening up the search and rescue process (if any).

Benefits students in general

This one’s a pretty obvious point I guess. I had already highlighted the fact above that most public WiFi services are available for free. So students who are travelling on a tight budget can benefit tremendously from it.

After all, the internet connection has become more or less a part of the basic amenities, especially to that of a student. A free WiFI service can naturally benefit him more than anything.

Cons

No reliability

Public WiFi doesn’t really guarantee a lot of reliability. I have specifically noticed many that actually go down as a result of an increase user load.

Okay, now that’s a problem.

Annoying advertisements

Many public WiFi services may bombard your device with ads as soon as you get onto their connection. Now this is a trick of making money to be honest.

The wifi service is free and they aren’t exactly taking a dime from you for it. But on the other hand, they are actually receiving a healthy paycheck from the ad companies as a result of your clicks.

To be honest, I don’t have much problem from all these ads if the amount of these ads is brought down to a reasonable amount. But no! This increased bombardment of ads does get annoying after a fair bit of time.

Low security

A public WiFI network has several security issues. That’s because several people access the network at the same time on the same spot.

So if your device’s firewall is not up to the mark at the time of your access, you are at a high risk of sending out confidential data (like passwords, pins etc.) over the network. The simple advice is NOT to access any sort of confidential data while you are on a public network.

Low speed

A public WiFI network is usually accessed by several people at the same time. This results in a considerable loss of bandwidth resulting in a slow network speed.

Sometimes, the connection even goes down completely as a result of an increased user load which becomes particularly annoying after some time. Now this is a problem that needs to be solved ASAP.

So that’s it then. What do you reckon now? Weigh the pros and cons individually and decide on the fact whether public WiFi’s right up to the mark or not. I reckon the implementation to be good enough for the public in general but more effort’s definitely needed to make it more secured and more reliable from the public’s point of view.